“Ganz vergessener Völker MüdigkeitenKann ich nicht abthun von meinen Lidern,Noch weghalten von der erschrockenen SeeleStummes Niederfallen ferner Sterne.”
“Ganz vergessener Völker MüdigkeitenKann ich nicht abthun von meinen Lidern,Noch weghalten von der erschrockenen SeeleStummes Niederfallen ferner Sterne.”
“Ganz vergessener Völker Müdigkeiten
Kann ich nicht abthun von meinen Lidern,
Noch weghalten von der erschrockenen Seele
Stummes Niederfallen ferner Sterne.”
(“I cannot lift from my eyelids the weariness of quite forgotten peoples, nor hold away from my terrified soul the dumb downfall of far stars.”)
The Roman and Spanish Empires appear to have perished largely from intellectual torpor. Are we to go the same way?
We have got to get over our distaste for scientific thought and scientific method. To take an example from the war, the physiologists at the experimental ground at Porton, in Hampshire, had considerable difficulty in working with a good many soldiers because the latter objected so strongly to experiments on animals, and did not conceal their contempt for people who performed them. And yet these soldiers would have had no hesitation in shelling the horses of hostile gun-teams, and the vast majority of them were in the habit of shooting animals for sport. I have never known a physiologist whowent in for shooting animals: physiologists know too much of the processes which occur in a wounded beast or bird that creeps away to die. And, though I have seen a good many scientific experiments on animals, I have never seen one which, so far as concerns the pain given, I should object to having performed on myself. That this attitude is not unusual would appear from the following experiment described by the director of the Porton experimental ground, in which he wished to compare the effects of hydrocyanic (or prussic) acid gas on himself and a dog. They both entered a chamber containing 1 part in 2,000 of the gas.
“In order (he writes) that the experiment might be as fair as possible and that my respiration should be relativelyas active as that of the dog, I remained standing, and took a few steps from time to time while I was in the chamber. In about thirty seconds the dog began to get unsteady, and in fifty-five seconds it dropped on the floor and commenced the characteristic distressing respiration which heralds death from cyanide poisoning. One minute thirty-five seconds after the commencement the animal’s body was carried out, respiration having ceased and the dog being apparently dead. I then left the chamber. As regards the result upon myself, the only real effect was a momentary giddiness when I turned my head quickly. This lasted about a year, and then vanished. For some time it was difficult to concentrate on anything for any length of time. It is hard tosay to what extent this was due to the experiment.”
As the result of this work, hydrocyanic acid was given up for use in the field, as phosgene is effective at fifty times this dilution, and mustard gas at one thousand times.
One of the grounds given for objection to science is that science is responsible for such horrors as those of the late war. “You scientific men (we are told) never think of the possible application of your discoveries. You do not mind whether they are used to kill or to cure. Your method of thinking, doubtless satisfactory when dealing with molecules and atoms, renders you insensible to the difference between right and wrong. And so you devise the means of universal destruction, andsell them into the hands of unrighteous and bloody-minded men.”
I note that the people who make these remarks do not refuse to travel by railway or motor-car, to use electric light, or to read mechanically printed newspapers. Nor do they install a well in their back-gardens to enjoy drinking the richer water of a pre-scientific age, with its interesting and variegated fauna. But it is quite easy to show that the destructive and horrible nature of modern warfare is due, not to the weapons used, but largely to the other applications of science which constitute the material basis of our civilization. Let us imagine the Great War fought with all our means of transport and preventive medicine, but no weapons more complicated than swords, spears,and possibly a few bows. With fewer munitions the armies could have been mobilized even more rapidly, and more men put in the fighting line. The Germans would probably have tried, as they tried in 1914, to bring about a “Schlacht ohne Morgen,” a battle on reversed fronts modelled on Cannae. The fighting would probably have been about as severe as at Cannae, and men would have been fighting in close order, ten or twenty deep, along a hundred-mile front. No doubt it would have been over sooner, but the losses would probably have been just as great. The French and Germans would doubtless both have gone on fighting until at least half their armies had become casualties, and, with four years’ fighting compressed into as many weeks, it wouldhave been impossible to tend more than a fraction of the wounded. The chief difference might have been that the Russians would have been victorious by mere weight of numbers, and the French defeated. In former wars slaughter was limited by the fact that large armies could not be fed, and developed epidemic diseases. They also moved very slowly. So it took twenty-three years (from 1792 to 1815) to wear down the resistance of the French nation. Moreover, the Great War was the first since the Second Punic War of the 3rd century B. C. between two great civilized nations, each fighting with all its might. This fact accounts for its ferocity. Modern transport and hygiene made its scale possible; the weapons used merely served to prolong it.
The objection to scientific weapons such as the gases of the late war, and such new devices as may be employed in the next, is essentially an objection to the unknown. Fighting with lances or guns, one can calculate, or thinks one can calculate, one’s chances. But with gas or rays or microbes one has an altogether different state of affairs. Poisonous gas had a great moral effect, just because it was new, and incomprehensible. As long as we permit ourselves to be afraid of the novel and unknown, there will be a very great temptation to use novel and unknown weapons against us. Now, terror of the unknown is thoroughly right and rational so long as we believe that the prince of this world is a malignant being. But it is not justifiable if we believe that the world is the expressionof a power friendly to our aspirations, or if we are atheists and hold that it is neutral and indifferent to human ideals.
It will by now have become clear to you that I am writing somewhat parabolically. What I have said about mustard gas might be applied,mutatis mutandis, to most other applications of science to human life. They can all, I think, be abused, but none perhaps is always evil; and many, like mustard gas, when we have got over our first not very rational objection to them, turn out to be, on the whole, good. If it is right for me to fight my enemy with a sword, it is right for me to fight him with mustard gas: if the one is wrong, so is the other. But I have no sympathy whatever for Mr. Facing-both-wayswhen he says that, though he is prepared on occasion to fight, he will not use these nasty new-fangled weapons. Of course I am not suggesting that we should violate or prepare to violate the Washington Agreement on this subject. I do, however, believe that we ought to denounce it at the earliest possible opportunity.
Such are the facts about chemical warfare. They will not be believed because a belief in them would do violence to the sentiments of most people. They will not be promulgated, as there is no money to be made out of them. (Chemical manufacturers make both high explosive and mustard gas, and the former more easily.) The views which I have expressed do not coexist in the mind of any party leaderor newspaper proprietor, and must therefore be those of a crank. But until some stronger argument can be waged against them than that they are unusual and unpleasant, there remains the possibility that they are true.
Transcriber’s Notes:Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.